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An Introduction to HTML and JavaScript for Scientists and Engineers
JavaScript and HTML, on the other hand, are immature and very unstable languages (if we can agree informally to call HTML a “language”) that function within a constantly changing Web environment. There are dialects of HTML and JavaScript that will work only on particular computing platforms and with specific software. While it is true that there are extensions to languages such as C and other older languages that are platform-dependent, the platform dependence of HTML and JavaScript is a major implementation issue rather than an occasional minor inconvenience.
As one indication of the teaching and learning challenges these environments provide, just three popular paperback HTML and JavaScript reference books occupy nearly 6 inches of space (15 cm in deference to non-U.S. readers) on my office bookshelf! A great deal of the material in those books is devoted to explaining the often subtle differences among various versions of HTML and JavaScript.
Fortunately, it is possible to present some core subsets of both HTML and JavaScript that can be used to solve some of the same kinds of computational problems that would be appropriate for a more traditional language such as C or C++. My motivation for writing this book was to learn how to use HTML and JavaScript to write my own online applications, and I now use this environment for many tasks that I previously would have undertaken in C. Based on this experience, I have concluded that, despite the fact that JavaScript is definitely not intended as a “scientific computing” language, it is nonetheless reasonable to present some basic programming skills of interest to science and engineering students and practitioners in the context of an HTML/JavaScript environment. The examples and exercises presented in the book do not require extensive science, engineering, or mathematics background (only rarely, in a few of the exercises) is knowledge beyond basic algebra needed), so I believe this book could serve as a beginning programming text even for high school students.
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